Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

Month: May 2016

Reflection on 2nd Sunday after the Day of Pentecost, Proper 4(Click here for biblical texts)

If ever we needed proof that healing happens communally ask Luke’s Roman centurion. Dramatis personae include the soldier and his cohorts, the Jewish leaders he turns to for help to contact Jesus, the slave near death and other regimental slaves, Jesus and disciples, and most likely a host of others who heard of the plea for help and its magnificent outcome. In our today, the news would have blanketed internet, Dr. Oz probably jealous, and most likely Ellen’s next guest would be the centurion, probably without his slave or lover or whatever he is—we are not able to imagine people owning their love objects, even as bodies are sold every day, vulnerable young and older women, young men, enslaved for the sexual pleasure of others—because this story is about one kind of healing from sickness and almost death, but not being liberated from inhuman bondage.

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But can we imagine a new ending— when the centurion/owner sees his great love healed, in the pink of health; in gratitude he orders a party at which he pronounces to all the world not only his love but also that he purchased an end to bondage—larger story where love not only heals but also frees both parties from entanglement in a system that values people as spoils of war, conquered peoples as machines to be chained for what they can produce, including, in some cases, sexual pleasure. Pleasure, did I say pleasure? It may be one thing to pay for pleasure from a willing seller but it is, isn’t it, different not to pay but to own body if not soul of another to receive the divine gift of intimate lovemaking as if one’s command can create bonding of such power, grace, and love.

Yes, this is an old story without this happy ending and still it tells of faith profound, true, real, strong enough to cause Jesus’ amazement but even more to clear away all bars to healing and then to welcome holy power that heals wherever it is allowed to land. Was it words from Jesus, not recorded here, or was it faith from the centurion/lover that healed? Or Jesus’ recognition of that faith? We shall never know for sure, but this we do know: faith can move mountains and does, but sometimes the mountain must want to be moved or at least its many admirers know it must be moved—God has the power to do all, but counts on us to lend our shoulders, hearts, minds, feet, and hands in the struggle.

Whose healing, whose liberation, have we made more possible, more real, today?

About this poem . . .This beautiful story of love and healing leaves a number of unanswered questions, including just how was the healing accomplished? And like many stories from a vastly different age, things we abhor today are unremarked and unchanged. That does not leave us unaccountable for who we are and what we do today; instead, it reminds us that holy testimony of old is still in need of new holy interpretation today.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Ghost). This the formula by which all things holy are done in Christian contexts. But what does it mean? Does anyone really know? Trinity Sunday—first after the Day of Pentecost–is intended by liturgical planners to help us understand the ancient doctrine containing all the power of our faith. But what kind of power is it? A cleric intones the words, all respond Amen, seeming to say the deed, whatever it is, is now done.

But what if the Trinity is not done, what if instead of finality it is just the beginning? What if that Blessed three-sided family is always on the move in a dance of divine proportions, touching, engaging each other and all living beings in an endless do-si-do, moving themselves and us to embrace and part over and over to create new life, new meaning, without end?

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And more, why does it have to be Father, white Father with white beard at that? If the Creator is old why is he, or she, not black—the first humans were Black in Africa, and their parent surely could be, should be it seems to me, the same. And why not mother, does not a woman give birth to all life of all sorts? Holy Mother God, an ample bosomed Parent in whose loins all are birthed and at whose breasts all are suckled! But more than a birthing, nursing machine, She sets the beat of the dance, teaches the steps, commissions her two cohorts to go forth to touch, empower, raise up, renew all life .

And they, Blessed Son and Holy Spirit, eager always to engage life, on the move, being fed and taught by Mother, bring fierce truth and energy everywhere whether invited or not, even as they know rejection and avoidance from all at least some of the time. But they do not stop, when dismissed or slain they do not truly leave or die but await a new opening to heal the breach and recreate the love of life they carried and taught the first time, indeed every time, world without end.

Blessed Son is male, with penis and all that signs maleness, going forth among us from time immemorial to teach and counsel and lead, daring to be what no man before or since has been or will be.

Could then Holy Blessed Spirit be some of both, Mother and Son, transcending, indeed expanding, preciously paltry ideas of gender? So that where She/He goes we are impregnated and birthed at the same time, to join the endless dance, the do-si-do of eternal creation, growing, when we listen to the divine beat, in spiritual strength, claiming our holy origins, unafraid to be really alive from the soul out to pulsing fingertips and toes, whirring brain energy seeking not stasis but vibration that moves all life to be in relation with Holy Mother God and all She creates and nurtures.

In the Name of the Mother, Blessed Son, and Holy Spirit, may it be so, and more, may we not miss the dance!

Have you ever noticed on the first Pentecost people were not only able to speak in tongues not their own, but also the people inside the house and outside could share—speak and be heard? How does that happen? It surely is not happening today in the United States where people, even when they are in the same room, talk right past each other. And instead of walls seeming to evaporate, some leaders, so they call themselves, propose to build new ones—and not just physical walls against immigrants, Muslims, but cultural ones against transgender persons and gay men and lesbian women, and put even more young and old black men, and women too, behind bars or behind the ultimate barrier called a casket, not to mention denying health care for many unable to pay—too bad, so sad, you’re on the wrong side of the great health divide. Just don’t get sick, okay?

Somehow on that Pentecost morning walls of the house where the followers of Jesus were hanging out came down, or if they did not fall physically they were transparent or at least able to let sound mingle inside and out. That surely was divine work but also it had to come from the desire to reach into the community of strangers, to those who believed other truths— they wanted to build community not tear it apart and they knew it could only be done by reaching across borders, taking the risk of talking with unfamiliar people, accepting difference as natural and God-given, indeed a gift manifesting the richness and bounty of Creation.

Building community requires trust, trust first in God, a power greater than oneself, a power greater than one’s voice claiming to be all that is necessary—vote for me and we’ll be great again, whatever that means—knowing God is the source of all our strength and goodness, that no one human or even group of humans provides all we need, no nation, no tribe, no church, synagogue, mosque, party, business, family is self-sufficient. It takes all of us to make a fruitful life together. When we deny our interconnectedness we slowly, but surely die. The interdependent web of life is like a spider web, truly, even the www.whatever, when one strand, one server, one station, one town’s water system, is broken, the whole is no longer, it is only a lesser version of what it was or could be.

So let us on this Pentecost be open and honest with those who doubt, as others doubted that morning long ago, but even more let us stand against those claiming to have, and even to be, the only answers we need, and especially we must stand foursquare opposed to those whose answers involve tearing down others in order to garner whatever spoils they think are theirs— because they shout louder and bully more. Most of all, let us lower our own walls, proclaiming liberty to the captives—even bullies are captured by a creed of greed and awful need—showing all of us the better, more faithful, trusting way of life.

About this poem . . .The message of Pentecost—everyone can be in conversation with each other, we can accept, even celebrate, our differences and learn from them, when we lower the barriers, when the walls come down—is so contrary to our public culture in the United States today. Can we have a new Pentecost? Can we actively engage across the lines in order to defuse tension and war, create peace? It must start in our own hearts and lives, of course, and then we can take it into the world. This will put us in active opposition with those who live off, and promote, fear, but even with them, our own walls need to be lowered.

A Meditation for the 7th Sunday of Easter (click here for biblical texts)

The cynic’s saying No good deed goes unpunished may have occurred to Paul in Philippi when— after making common cause with Lydia and friends—he ordered ugly spirits to leave a servant girl who irritated him with public pronouncements . We don’t know her feelings about being released from demon’s power but Paul and Silas find themselves on the wrong end of the law because her owners are enriched from her fortune-telling. Not for the first time or the last, emissaries of The Way find themselves stripped, beaten, and locked up.

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But the story takes an unexpected turn to become one of the greatest liberation moments of all time, perhaps ultimate in nonviolent revolution, a model for how God works when we pray and get out of the way. Singing and praying in the night, as their fellow prisoners listen, some force—is it an act of nature or of God or simply the earnest, faithful power of their prayers and voices— creates a midnight disturbance, an earthquake we are told, that flings open every cell door without so much as leaving a trace of damage to the walls and foundation. Even more, no one injured, not even the jailer who had confined Paul and Silas to the worst of the puny accommodations. In gratitude he takes his new friends home for blessing and supper.

This is the way we want our world to work! Hebrews escape between the walls of the Red Sea but Egyptians are so overcome by the sight they do not pursue and thus do not die. Israelites advance into Canaan and locals are so glad to see them they throw a neighborhood party. In his determination to find the child born in Bethlehem Herod throws a giant party, treating all the children and their parents to dinner, games and magic show before sending them home. In our own version of Canaan (recreated in Palestine in 1948?), European settlers bring much wealth to share with natives, no attacks are made by either side, no reservations for native peoples are created and none die from diseases imported from Europe. And here’s one more: needing to import labor, recruiters go to Africa with brochures and bonuses for early signing, inviting locals onto cruise ships for the voyage across the Atlantic with secure, paying jobs and health care waiting here for those who choose the journey to try a New World.

And how about this? Police, leaders, citizens learn to sit down with young Black men, listen to what they need to gain self-respect, and then work to meet the need.

A utopia, you say?

But why not? Paul and Silas were two men, people like us. God is still God. Let’s start praying and singing (don’t worry about your voice, it is the intention that matters), and expecting the disturbance. The world is ready for change. It begins when we unlock whatever cell of despair, discouragement, and doubt where we have put ourselves or have allowed others with a different agenda to confine us.

About this poem . . .Acts of the Apostles continues to share stories of divine intervention (at least that is how I see an earthquake that does no damage) that challenge our rational minds. But is that not the job of faith, to move us beyond our ordinary selves into the realm of Spirit where anything may happen, especially if it intends or results in liberation for the oppressed?

A Meditation on the Ascension of the Lord, Year C (click here for biblical texts)

Does anyone observe Ascension Day today? Our Lord bade farewell to trusted comrades and rose in the sky, as one irreverent person said, like a balloon slowly drifting to heaven out of sight but not out of mind. Did this really happen or is it a way of expressing the feelings of disciples knowing Jesus was gone, like a young child watching a loved parent drive away after the divorce, the child not sure she will ever see the other again. And Jesus, did Jesus sob like the sad parent on his way up? But wait. Even if we observe, do we believe? And does it matter either way? To believe ascension is different from believingin Ascension; do the details, as we have them, have to be true in order to know, to know, that his friends felt his absence—they, unlike us, may not have known for sure he would still be around. Or do we know, do we trust that Jesus is here, even though he ascended? Or are we so jaded by science, by incessant needs for proof, scientific proof, that we cannot grant God the power to do this, to let Jesus rise right before their, our, eyes? And return, even if not in the flesh? If we cannot, and for many it must be so, then we are more powerful than God—or at least God can only do what we allow Him to do. What kind of God would that be?

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Or can we understand with Karl Rahner that Ascension tells us that God intends flesh be redeemed and glorified? Flesh be glorified, is that even Christian? So many years of hearing about flesh mortified, flesh hung out to bleed and dry on crosses, flesh to be tamed, can we think God really loves us, and our flesh, enough to glorify and redeem it, not just spiritually but even physically? Is God reveling in our fleshiness? If not, what are we to make of incarnation, Jesus fleshing God better than any human, or as many say, the way only He can. Whatever. Doctrine does not guarantee salvation but following Jesus wherever he goes and being with him wherever he is calling us makes a good recipe for blessed, even holy, life.

About this poem . . .So many of us have lost connection with special holy days, and if we observe them at all we have moved them to Sunday, to avoid inconvenience in our daily lives filled with so much important business. Yet is the pain the disciples, men and women, humans all, must have felt, not worthy of remembrance? And what of our blessed, holy flesh: will we ascend someday? Will anyone remember?